Is Dubai better than the Free City Prospera ?

And does data confirm the thesis of the Sovereign Individual book, digital nomadism, Bitcoin in El Salvador, Network States and much more !

I had the pleasure of being interviewed by Timothy Allen of the Free Cities podcast.

We talked about many topics such as the advantages of the free city of Prospera over Dubai, how Dubai treats its residents like customers, the use of Bitcoin in El Salvador, digital nomads as a network proto-nation, why your home country is the only one that takes you for granted, if data confirms the thesis of the Sovereign Individual book, and much more!

I'm sharing the interview here without further ado, with the intro written by Timothy.

Timestamps and audio transcript are available below.

Olivier Roland: The Sovereign Individual, Infopreneurship & Nation-State Disruption

Intro by Timothy Allen :

Olivier is a French author, entrepreneur, digital nomad and influencer with over 800,000 followers across his social media channels.  His latest book (not out yet) focuses on how the internet is disrupting nation-states and how to navigate these opportunistic times.

Olivier has been testing out the sovereign individual thesis for his manuscript by analysing the data related to the predictions that were made in the original book.  What he has discovered is incredibly fascinating along with the other topics discussed in this episode including China, Próspera, Dubai, charter cities, digital nomadism, network states and Olivier explains to me what an infopreneur is and why it is such an important concept for the 21st century.

Public service announcement: At about the 1hr 10m mark a microphone blew up and I had to restart the recording. I didn’t try to splice them together this time so prepare for quite a jolt in the conversation.

Enjoy.

Listen to the episode on

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Time stamps

[00:30] Introduction.

[04:08] Using special economic zones for experimentation and innovation.

[09:28] Describe what Próspera is doing.

[15:23] Próspera's unique social contract and governance model, with emphasis on experimentation and potential for innovation.

[20:44] Describe what you saw when you visited Próspera.

[26:38] How did you set up your business in Dubai?

[32:57] Dubai treats its residents like customers.

[38:23] What is the next innovation of SEZs?

[43:43] Bitcoin adoption in El Salvador, challenges and limitations.

[48:51] The future of nation states with a focus on digital nomads and the sovereign individual thesis.

[53:27] Analysing the predictions of 'The Sovereign Individual'.

[58:38] Digital nomads, captive audiences, and the future of global mobility.

[1:05:34] Why do people choose to stay in their home country?

[1:09:51] The future of digital nomads and sovereign individuals in a globalized world.

[1:14:54] Creating digital nomad communities and negotiating with governments for favorable conditions.

[1:19:31] Creating a digital nomad network state.

[1:25:00] Who are the big digital nomad influencers?

[1:30:49] Why is Dubai so successful?

[1:36:54] Infopreneurship.

Text transcript

**Timothy Allen:** Welcome to the Free Cities Podcast. My name is Timothy Allen and this is the official podcast of the Free Cities Foundation. Hello and welcome to episode number 77 of the Free Cities Podcast. Did you know 77 is the sum of the first eight prime numbers. So it's a special number, especially if you're a Talking Heads fan like me to look that one up. Anyway, I've got a special guest for you today on this special episode. And this was one of my favorites from our recent trip to Dubai. Olivier Roland is a French author, entrepreneur, digital nomad, and well followed influencer. He's got over 800,000 followers on social media and his latest book, which is not out yet. We discuss it in the podcast focuses on how the internet is disrupting nation states and also how to navigate these opportunistic times. Something that came up in the conversation that I found absolutely fascinating. And this was research for Olivier's book. He's been testing out the sovereign individual thesis as in the book, the sovereign individual, if you don't know what it is, look it up, but he's been analyzing the data related to many of the predictions that the book made when it first came out. And what he discovered is absolutely brilliantly fascinating. And especially for me, because I've been a keen observer of the sovereign individual for a number of years now. We also discuss topics including China, Prospera in Honduras, Dubai, charter cities, digital nomadism, of course, network states. And Olivier explains to me what an infopreneur is. Great to get another new word in this week. Infopreneur. Anyway, quick public service announcement before I go. At about the one hour, 10 minute mark in this conversation, a microphone blew up and I had to restart the recording. This time I didn't try to splice them together because it wouldn't have made sense. So prepare yourself for quite a jolt in the conversation. Anyway, don't forget the Free Cities Telegram channel is most definitely the place to be to meet everyone in this space and to keep up to date on everything that's new. Or, of course, if you're not the sociable meeting people type, well, I've still got your back because here at the Free Cities podcast, we also have all the up-to-date info and dialogue from the cutting edge of the wedge. But you don't have to engage with anyone, really. All you have to do, as you know, is just sit back, relax and enjoy my conversation with Olivier Roland.

**Timothy Allen:** Out of interest, what is your connection to knowing about special economic zones in China?

**Olivier Roland:** I'm studying the subject because I'm writing a book about how nation states are being disrupted by the Internet and what are the possible alternate models of governance. So obviously it's a very interesting topic for me. I know it's really helped China to do the transition from a pure communist system to this hybrid communist slash capitalist system that they have. I mean, they still pretend they are communists, but they are mostly capitalists now. And it's because they saw, they did some experimentation in these free zones and they saw it was working. And it was actually making everyone more wealthy, which is actually the goal of communism in the first place. So when they saw that these free zones, these experiments were doing well, they were like, hey, maybe we can actually extend this experiment to the whole country. And that's what made China on this path of being more and more wealthy every year.

**Timothy Allen:** I mean, personally speaking, do you think that's one of the more important aspects of a special economic zone? The ability to try out something new in a small scale before you roll it out into the country in general?

**Olivier Roland:** I think it's a very important feature. When you look at history, for example, what made communism so bad is not so much the system or the ideas, because when it was created, we didn't know if it would work or not. Maybe it was a genius stroke from Karl Marx to divide this. But the problem of communism is it was deployed on a massive scale before it was tested. That's why we had 100 million deaths in the 20th century because of communism. If we would have tried communism on small scales in special zones or small jurisdictions, I don't think it would have happened, because we would have seen, OK, it doesn't work, actually, not like this. Look at China. They deployed it on a mass scale. It killed millions of people, and then they had to go back to another system. But instead of deploying on mass scale, try first on a small scale and see if it works or not .

So I think it can really... This experimental approach is basically bringing the scientific methodology to a political system of governance, which is very, very interesting. We can definitely envision a world where we can use the SEZs or some type of SEZs as experiments to see, to try new ways of collaborating. Do you think Dubai used it in that sense? I mean, they do and they don't. I think they could go further than what they do. The DFIC for sure is a very interesting experiment. I don't think there was a SEZ before that allowed the law of another country to apply. I'm not sure. I think they are the first, which is very innovative. But now there are other models that go further, like Free Cities and especially Prospera in Honduras that go the extra step.

**Timothy Allen:** Describe... You visited Prospera. Describe Prospera. What was your experience of visiting? And I mean, even physically, you know.

**Olivier Roland:** Yeah. So I visited it like for two weeks in February 2024. And it started more or less in 2019, something like that. I mean, officially it was 2017, but they really started to build stuff at the end of the 2010s. And so first, the island of Roatan is accessible from the US, not so much from the rest of the world. So it can be kind of harder to go there. But when I was there, I was actually impressed by what they accomplished in so few years. It's like, it's very impressive, especially, I mean, there was two to three years of COVID right when they started, which made everything more complicated. And I was impressed. But at the same time, it's still very small. Like you can feel it's very, very, very early. I told the guys, I felt like in a combination of being like one of the first pioneers moving from Europe and to the US, and also kind of being in the Manhattan Project, you know, it's like early pioneers going to this remote place in the world, OK, with modern comfort, but not so as comfortable as in Dubai or in New York, and doing this wild experiment. We don't know really yet if it's going to work or not. But you can feel the excitation. You can feel you are maybe part of something very big in history, and that it can become very big. You know, you feel the possibility of these experiments turning out to be like something profoundly changing for humanity.

**Timothy Allen:** Describe the experiment then that Prospera is conducting in your own words.

**Olivier Roland:** Sure. So, well, the idea came first from an economist called Paul Weber, who got the Nobel Prize of Economy in 2018 for all his work, not only for this idea. And he came up with this idea saying, hey, there are quite a few countries in the world that don't do so well. One of the reasons is they usually get bad regulations, bad laws. He did a TED talk showing, for example, that in an African country, the students had to go in the streets under a public streetlight to study because it was dark and they didn't have electricity at home.

And he said, why? Because there is a monopoly in this state for electricity, and it's too expensive for most people. And when the government tried to liberate this, to make it more private, well, some people complained because they had an interest in things continuing like that. So he was like, hey, what if these countries that honestly have not many things to lose, maybe nothing to lose, what if they do a partnership with a country that have maybe better established laws and regulations?

And he gave the example of Madagascar doing a partnership with Canada and basically saying, hey, there is 10 square kilometers of jungle. It's for you, either permanently or for at least 90 years, why not? And the laws of Canada will apply. Do anything you want. We just ask you that all people in Madagascar will have access to this. It's not like we have to cross a border. It will still be part of Madagascar, but with Canadian rules. And the idea is that it will benefit everyone. Canadian entrepreneurs and investors will be able to build something from scratch and make money. And it will benefit the host country because it will create wealth for the population. And we'll be able to work there to make better money, to bring also good practices in that country. And he did two TED Talks about that.

And after the first TED Talk, the Honduran government saw this and was like, hey, that's amazing. One of the arguments of Paul Romer was like, in many countries that have problems to develop, one of their biggest problems is like a good part of the population is trying to escape. They are emigrating to other countries, often illegally. And why, if you do this kind of partnership, they can emigrate in the country. They don't need to leave the country. If they want to leave the country, it's because they have bad conditions and they want better conditions. Why not give them better conditions where they are? So it's, again, a win-win situation. And Honduras has this problem for years because they have like many, many Central American countries and Latin American countries have this problem of people escaping and especially going to the US as illegal immigrants or legal immigrants.

And when the Honduran government saw that, they were like, hey, it's amazing because it could maybe solve this problem of people going out. If they could stay in Honduras, it would be way better. So they contacted Paul Romer and they tried to do something. In the end, it didn't work. For many reasons, I'm not going to do a deep dive into these.

But then Titus Gebel had the idea of taking the Paul Romer idea and say, hey, it's an amazing strategy, but why do you need a government? You don't need a government. You don't need to do a partnership with Canada or with the UK. You just can do a partnership with a private company, but with the same system. So the idea is to create a partnership that will be beneficial for the host country and for the people who want to create these kind of new jurisdictions. And in Honduras, what happened is they did something. The partnership is you can have your own laws in Prospera as long as it's not against the constitution of Honduras.

So you know, for example, nobody can open a shop to sell cocaine, for example. It's not possible. And also, you need to respect our criminal laws. So everything that is illegal in the penal system, you cannot do. But everything else, the laws of Honduras don't apply, and you can create your own rules. So it's amazing because it opens a wide range of possibilities of experimentations. And the ideas of Titus in his book of free private cities is, I really love his vision. His vision is to have, I mean, at some point, ideally hundreds of free cities all around the world, all trying to implement their own system and competing, friendly, in a friendly manner, but competing to see which system is working the best and which system can bring the most of value for residents and also the host country.

And this is very important because I see sometimes people thinking it's like a, how do you say in English, parasitic relationship. It cannot be. If you want the vision to succeed, you need to add value for the host country. If you don't add value, maybe it's going to work for one or two times, and then nobody will want to work with you anymore. So it's very important that you are bringing value to the country.

And the vision is amazing. It's like, instead of like the current system, incentive people to either win elections in democratic system or do revolutions, sometimes bloody revolutions, coup, and these kind of things. Instead of that, you can just do your little experiment with only volunteers, so you don't impose your vision on anyone, and see if it works or not. See if you can find a government who is willing to host you. See if you can find people who can work with you, want to do the complete vision with you, and see if it works really in reality.

Imagine if Karl Marx would have had this model. It would have been amazing. He could have tried communism on a small scale and see it would not work. And then he would have probably changed his theory, and we would have had way less death in the 20th century because of this.

So in Prospera, the experiment is mostly driven by a libertarian vision. And I mean, I have a lot of respect for libertarian system and strategy and vision, but it's like communism. It has never been tried before. We don't know if it will work or not. But at least in Prospera, it's going to be tried on a small scale, and we'll see what ideas are good, what ideas are bad, what needs to be improved. And it's great.

And a few things that are very interesting about Prospera is you have a real social contract because democracies are supposed to be based on a real social contract, meaning a contract between basically the citizen and the government, which is like the relationship between rights and privileges on all sides. And it's supposed to be a very important part of the legitimacy of democracies.

The only problem of the social contract is where is your signature? You never signed it. So it's not really a contract. It was you just happen to be born in a place, and then you have to follow the contract. And the government can change the contract at will, so it's not really a contract. I mean, theoretically, it's because the people, the nation as a whole, vote for people who will change the contract on their behalf. But still, it's not a contract.

And it means also like 50.1% of the population can import their will on the 49.9%, which is maybe not ideal. So in Prospera, you have a real social contract. When you arrive, you need to sign a contract that is like 1,200 pages, something like this, and it's in both English and Spanish. So it's not as big in one language. And then the government of Prospera cannot change one paragraph without you agreeing to it, which is amazing. And it's the kind of things that we don't know if it will work or not. Maybe we discover that it's too static, and it's not going to allow Prospera to adapt fast to changing circumstances. Maybe we discover it's amazing because people will be really reassured by the stability of the law, and it will empower them to do bolder things. We don't know. But that's the beauty of it. It's going to be tried, and we'll see if it will work or not.

Other things is like you don't need to follow just one set of laws. When you create a business there, you can choose from a short list of advanced countries like which regulation you want to follow. So you can say, hey, for this business, I'm going to follow the regulations and laws of Norway or Canada or Switzerland. And you will choose what you prefer for any reason you want. You can also choose to follow the laws of Honduras if you want or just not follow any law and basically follow the common law jurisprudence. But it means if you do that, it's probably going to be harder for you to find an insurance company willing to insure you.

So again, very interesting. We'll see if it works. What happens? And also, what about the interaction? What happens when a company following the laws of France does something bad to a company following the law of Norway? Or Switzerland or the US, what are the interactions? We don't know. But we will see if it will work or not. And also, there is no official currency. You can use any currency you want, including cryptos, which I think is very interesting to see if there is a good chance that the free market of currencies is going to be a good thing for people. And many, many other things are interesting in this experiment.

**Timothy Allen:** Can you describe what you actually saw physically at Prospera? In particular, did you look into even which businesses were there and things like that?

**Olivier Roland:** So as I said, I'm impressed at what they did in such a few years, but also it's still very tiny. I mean, they bought recently a golf course that is quite big. But I learned at the end that actually, you know, most of the of the houses and buildings there are not on Prospera territory.

When you go to Prospera, you have to cross like a border. It's not really a border, but like with guards. But then you step out and back and out and in and out and in all the time from Prospera to Honduras and you don't even know it because it's still very fragmented. And actually, there are only two people really living in Prospera right now, like I mean, physically on their territory.

So it's a bit confusing. And when you arrive, you don't realize this. You have two locations, the first one that they bought in 2018 or something and the new golf course. It's not directly connected. It's close, but not directly connected. And the golf course is like a mosaic of Honduras, Prospera, Honduras, Prospera. And I mean, they do have a bit of buildings that are amazing. The beach is amazing. The location is great. It's a tropical island. The weather is perfect. It's very cool. The buildings on the golf course are amazing. They are also building a residence that should be finished anytime soon that I visited called the Dunar Residence on the first location.

**Timothy Allen:** I always thought, you were talking about Pristine Bay as the other side. I always assumed and I thought I was told that Pristine Bay is included within the jurisdiction of Prospera.

**Olivier Roland:** It is. It is. Yeah, but because there is a lot of property there. People are living there. Yeah, but many properties there are not in Pristine Bay. The thing, you know, it's not the whole Pristine Bay thing.

And for example, there is the beach center that is part of Prospera and is kind of the headquarter, and there is like a place like maybe five minutes of walk from on the, if you are, if you have the sea on the back, it's on the left. And the rest around there are not part of Prospera. They are Honduran companies. Right. So, I mean, you don't know these. There's still, there's actually Bitcoins and stuff. And you feel they are part of Prospera, but they're not really. Right. So, it could change the status and change to be a Prospera company, but it's kind of a gray zone right now, especially because the government is not so enthusiastic about.

**Timothy Allen:** The Dunia residence, though, is in Prospera.

**Olivier Roland:** The Dunia residence is in Prospera. Within the Dunia residence, there is a large number of residential units. Yeah, but they are not finished yet. Yes, of course. So, nobody lived there yet. But yeah, it's imminent.

**Timothy Allen:** I mean, we know people that have bought property. And I mean, did you think about relocating there? Is that or did you just go there to discover what it was like?

**Olivier Roland:** Yeah, no, I wanted to visit Prospera for a while. I happened to be in Costa Rica, so I was like close. And I have a friend, Niklas, who is organizing Vitalia there, who said you should come. It's amazing. So, he made me come actually, because I mean, I'm also very interested in longevity and this kind of thing. So, it was a good bonus for me that Vitalia was happening at the same time. And I interviewed quite a few people, including the mayor, because I want to speak about Prospera in my book. That's how I knew. That's the mayor who told me about this mosaic of territories. But most people don't know this, actually.

**Timothy Allen:** So, what was your conclusion then? Would you utilize the... I mean, you live in Dubai, right? So, you've chosen to come to a place like Dubai, you're very mobile, you can go and live where you want. What was your feeling with regards to Prospera in that sense?

**Olivier Roland:** I think... So, that's what I was saying. It's like, I am very excited about the project. I'm like, okay, now I became a e-resident since I saw this. I want to support the project. I mean, I'm already an investor in Tipolis, but I want to help even more. But at the same time, it's very early. And the thing is, right now, only two people will live on the territory and maybe they have a population living, like thinking they live in Prospera, of maybe 200, 300 people. So it's like a village.

But it's also very interesting because it's very special people going there. So it's amazing to meet interesting people, especially people interested in these kinds of things. But at the same time, it's so small that you miss the network effect of a big city, like Dubai. I mean, it's a chicken and egg problem, right? It's always the same thing. So for me, personally, I feel it's a bit too early for me to move there. But I'm definitely like, I will check regularly what is going on. I will probably visit regularly too and try to help as much as possible. But it's hard to beat Dubai right now, obviously. So, yeah, I need big cities, personally.

**Timothy Allen:** Tell me about Dubai then. And whether or not, I mean, do you think indirectly you're benefiting from Dubai's SEZs, let's say?

**Olivier Roland:** Of course, yeah. I mean, the way for most people like me, like, I mean, entrepreneurs, to emigrate to Dubai is you create one of the companies, one of the free zones in the UAE, and then you employ yourself and you get the visa. That's what I did. And that's, I mean, I have many colleagues in my industry living there, here, and they did the same thing, right? So we benefited from the free zones because you have so many, you can choose which one you want.

For example, when I moved here in 2018, and I had a friend already living there, and I asked him, OK, what free zone do you recommend? And he told me, OK, the free zone I use is this one in Dubai. So I contacted them and they asked for like 25 pages of business plan to explain my business. And I was like, guys, I'm not asking for a loan, sorry. I already have a successful business. I don't need to explain to you. So I found another free zone and they just needed like two lines explaining what is my business. So I use this free zone, you know? So it's good you have this competition of free zones in the UAE that allow to tell to every need. I hate paperwork, so I went with this free zone.

**Timothy Allen:** Why do you think that one of the free zones needed 25 pages of info? It didn't seem like a very competitive advantage.

**Olivier Roland:** Yeah, I think it's because some free zones, every free zone is specialized in something, right? So every free zone is maybe probably specialized in like, we follow everything by the book. So you know, if you are in the free zone, you have a good reputation and you know, you have a good standing. You know, I don't care about that. My customers will buy from me if I have a company in the US or here or anywhere. They don't care, right? But for some people it's important. And some people just don't know. They just contact one free zone and they do whatever the free zone asks, right?

**Timothy Allen:** Who are your customers?

**Olivier Roland:** So my customers are mostly entrepreneurs and people who want to create their company, French speaking. So living all around the world, but mostly in the French speaking countries like France, Switzerland, Belgium, Canada.

**Timothy Allen:** Okay, so describe your life here then in Dubai and compare and contrast with the same setup where you were living in France, for example.

**Olivier Roland:** Yeah, sure. I mean, there are many, many advantages about Dubai. I did actually two videos of almost one hour on my YouTube channel about this because I mean, it's amazing. I think Dubai is probably the place in the world about which people have the most cliché. You know, it's crazy. And I understand because I had the same cliché before I came here. I actually came here because I was forced to. My girlfriend at the time, she had her best friend having a wedding here and she said, you need to come. It's super important for me. And I was like, but why Dubai? There is nothing there, you know? It was in 2017. And when I came, I was surprised to like the city. I actually was like, wow, it's actually impressive.

And many people have this kind of impression. So I mean, I could go on for like a long time about all the advantages of Dubai compared to France and many Western countries. First, obviously, it's very business friendly. The regulations are kind of light here. Of course, they have regulations, right? It's not regulation free, but it's way lighter than in many other countries. Obviously, it's very tax friendly. Until this year, it was completely tax free. I mean, no corporate tax, no income tax, no capital gain tax. Now they have a 9% corporate tax, which is fine. I mean, it's one of the lowest in the world. So it's not going to change many things.

The government is actually efficient, which is amazing. I mean, it's like you're like, wow, the government can actually be efficient. It's crazy. You know, I mean, nothing is perfect. I'm not saying the government is perfect, but it's like, I think it's very close to the ideal of what a government should be. You know, you can do almost everything online. Everything happens on schedule. When you need to visit the administration, usually it's fast and efficient. You can even buy to be in VIP lines if you want, which is great. And yeah, I mean, the ruler is, I love to say that he's the CEO of Dubai Inc. And you really see that they see their residents as customers. And this, I think, is a very important way of being relevant in this new world. In the book I'm writing, I'm like, I think my conclusion will be basically, nation-states will have two big paths to explore. More and more controlling and serving the population and trying to prevent them to escape, or treating more and more their residents like customers instead of taxpayers.

And which is a very, very important change of paradigm for many Western countries and many countries in the world. And Dubai, they get it. And you can see even in their communication, they always speak about customer experience. And the ruler of Dubai, for example, is known for going to visit an administration very early in the morning. And if he sees that some people are not working when they should, he fires them on the spot. He goes to the airport and he measures the time when someone gets out of the plane, how long it's going to take for him to basically leave the airport. And if it's too long, he's not happy. So see, the administration is always trying to streamline everything for the residents.

And when you look at the evolution of the laws, it's mostly going in one direction, which is to please the residents. And I would say especially the Western residents, but the residents. So this is amazing to be treated as a customer instead of a taxpayer. You know, it's like completely mind-blowing. And I think Dubai understands very well that they are fighting in a new world where people are more and more mobile and they need to attract talented people with a good package of services that are not too costly. Basically people want to have good services for the money they pay. And before governments had a monopoly on this, and it's less and less true because people are more and more mobile. So you need to have a good price-quality ratio, and Dubai is amazing for this.

**Timothy Allen:** Interesting to hear it like that. I mean, what you're describing is really the model of a free-private-city, you know, customers of the city operator. So, I mean, talk to me about how you imagine the concept of free-private-cities would actually manifest in real life. How does it go down, do you think? How does it actually manifest?

**Olivier Roland:** Yeah, it's a good question. Well, I mean, right now it's hard. The start is hard because, I mean, it's so new that you need to convince people. First you need to make them understand the concept, then you need to convince them, then you need to do it fast because if you do a partnership with a democratic country, maybe the government in two or three years is going to change, right? And then you will need to start all over because usually the opposition doesn't want to continue the project of the previous government.

But I think as soon as we'll have a few projects going on and probably some of them will work very well and bring prosperity to their host country, then it's going to open the Pandora box. And then we'll see more and more projects getting off the ground, more and more governments willing to try this model. I mean, it's like SEZs. First it was a new concept and you need to evangelize people. Then I mean, politicians knew all about it and they were like, okay, we need also to put that, to implement that in our country. So we are really, really early in the curve and hopefully we'll reach the next stage as soon as possible.

**Timothy Allen:** Can you tell me, according to you then, what makes a private autonomous city better than Dubai?

**Olivier Roland:** Yeah, I mean, Dubai has put the bar really high, I have to say. And they are conscious of this. The ruler says he doesn't want to be the best in the Middle East. He wants Dubai to be the best jurisdiction in the world. And for him, the archenemy to beat in the friendly competition is Singapore. So they want to be better than Singapore. And I mean, it's amazing what they accomplished so far. It's like really, really impressive. Already Dubai is like the fourth most visited city in the world. I mean, what the fuck? Sorry, it's like, what the hell? It's crazy.

But so, yeah, it's going to be hard to beat Dubai. I think probably a free city can improve on the Dubai model by being more flexible, willing to try new stuff faster, bolder stuff. I mean, Prospero is already way more ambitious in what it wants to experiment than Dubai. Also Dubai, obviously, the government has to compose with the local population. They cannot do everything. When you look at the laws, some of them, for example, until recently, it was forbidden officially to have sex outside of marriage. But the law was not enforced, but it was there, probably because the government doesn't want to upset the conservative part of its population. So it has to do some reform slowly, right? A free city will, I mean, it will have to compose with the host countries, so of course, but probably we have more freedom to experiment this kind of new laws, regulations.

**Timothy Allen:** Do you think the residential component is important? I mean, which one should come first, the business element or the residential element? So you mean the quality of life?

**Olivier Roland:** No, the success of the zone. I mean, you know, like originally zones had no residential component. In Dubai now there is, but it's not exactly the same as an autonomous zone. It's slightly different.

Yeah, I mean, the thing is, in Dubai it's separated. Like my company is in a freezone, but I've never been to the freezone. I live because when you have a company in the UAE, you can live in the UAE wherever you want. It's like in the US more or less, you know. So I mean, maybe they can do DFIC+, you know, just going one step further. But what would it be?

**Timothy Allen:** Exactly. I don't actually know. I think, and this is what we've been discussing and what part of this documentary is about trying to find out is what is the next innovation of SEZs? Not what is the next innovation in an SEZ, but actually the innovation of SEZs. So what would your answer to that be?

**Olivier Roland:** I think for serious, big time. I mean, for me it's like the continuation. But maybe from some places like Dubai, they need an intermediate step. So, because I mean, DFIC is already a SEZ+, right? It's like the jurisdiction and laws of another country applying just on this zone. So maybe we can improve on that and do something hybrid between DFIC and Prospera.

**Timothy Allen:** But you said it earlier, though, living here, the government really works. I'm not quite sure what Dubai would benefit from. Because like I say, in a way, their model of the whole of Dubai is kind of like a free city in a way.

**Olivier Roland:** Yeah, that's true.

**Timothy Allen:** So what would they benefit from?

**Olivier Roland:** I mean, they're also willing to experiment and see what is working or not. So maybe they will find something that can even improve better the model. You can always improve, right? So but yeah, you're right. The government is efficient. The quality of services you get for the money is incredible. It's like incredible. The whole quality of life here is amazing. For someone like me, meaning like a digital nomad, like a web entrepreneur, it's the closest thing to perfection I found so far. I mean, nothing is perfect, but it's like very close, very close.

**Timothy Allen:** What would you improve in Dubai?

**Olivier Roland:** It's a good question. I would improve the banks. The banks are horrible. I would deregulate a little bit the banks so fintech companies can operate in an easier way. And I would allow people to use cryptos in their businesses too. But yeah, the service in the banks is like bad, bad, bad.

**Timothy Allen:** Well, that's interesting because I've heard that the UAE is crypto friendly. Would that be a wrong assumption?

**Olivier Roland:** No, I mean, they have a... I mean, I'm not a specialist of this. I use cryptos only personally. But yeah, they have free zones and regulations tight for crypto companies. But if a restaurant wants to accept Bitcoin, it can't.

**Timothy Allen:** Can't? Not just can't be bothered, actually can't?

**Olivier Roland:** Yeah.

**Timothy Allen:** That's interesting. That would be a phenomenal evolution if Bitcoin became some kind of legal tender. That would really work.

**Olivier Roland:** I mean, yeah. They should put, I mean, they should do like El Salvador and make Bitcoin a legal tender. But the thing, of course, the problem of Dubai is like they cannot do that. They have to do this at the federal level. And I'm not sure the UAE and Abu Dhabi will want to do that.

**Timothy Allen:** Yeah. I mean, what would the benefit to the government be? What's the incentive to start allowing Bitcoin transactions?

**Olivier Roland:** I mean, already the Dirahm is tied to the USD. So it's not really a sovereign currency. And El Salvador was almost in the same situation because it's a dollarized economy. So why not have another currency? Because already your currency, you cannot print it as much as you want. And also, I think it's going to be a great marketing thing, you know, to be the first country in the Middle East to make Bitcoin a legal tender. It will be all over the news, positively and negatively, obviously. But it's also going to attract many Bitcoiners. And I think they are becoming more and more a force to be contended with.

**Timothy Allen:** I should imagine that making Bitcoin legal tender here would ruffle too many feathers in the international community. Because in a way, El Salvador were ready to stick two fingers up at everyone. They almost had nothing to lose in a way. Whereas Dubai, like the financial zone, for example, is deeply embedded with the world's financial community. And I would imagine that would be...

**Olivier Roland:** It's possible. But at the same time, they have more bargaining power than many small countries like El Salvador. They are an important power in the Middle East. They are very influential. They have money. They have oil with Abu Dhabi. And they are buying military equipment everywhere. And I mean, I'm not saying that they have the same influence, like power and influence as Saudi, for example. But they have a little bit more weight than El Salvador. And they try to... But maybe it's too hard for them.

**Timothy Allen:** Have you been to El Salvador?

**Olivier Roland:** Just one day as a step between Costa Rica and Prospera.

**Timothy Allen:** After the Bitcoin law was passed?

**Olivier Roland:** Yeah, no, it was just like this year in February 2024. So just after like one week after the re-election of Bukele. And it was very interesting. I stayed only one day, but I saw a few interesting things.

**Timothy Allen:** Do you want to share ?

**Olivier Roland:** Of course, yeah.

So what is very interesting about El Salvador, when you arrive at the airport, there is like the photo of Bukele and his wife, and like a reconstitution of his presidential seat and office. And it's crazy. People are like lining to take selfies in front of it. Already you see this guy is a rock star in his country. It's crazy. I never saw any politician that popular. It's like really impressive.

And I was there only 24 hours, but I made it my quest to find a business or some businesses that will accept Bitcoin. And so I hired a guy to do a tour of the center of the city, of the capital. And everywhere I went, I asked, do you accept Bitcoin? Do you accept Bitcoin? Do you accept Bitcoin? I have bar, restaurants and everything. And all the time people were saying, ah, sorry, no.

So they were like, you could see they were a bit sorry about it. I mean, what is great already that they know Bitcoin, you don't need to explain to them what it is. But it's not really, I mean, I didn't see a lot of usage. But my guy said, hey, you can pay me in Bitcoin if you want. And he had a bar too. So we went to his bar and I bought a few drinks and he's a tour with Bitcoin. I took a video of it actually. And it took like two seconds with the lighting. So it's possible to find some people.

And the guy said basically that everyone installed the Chivo wallet when it was made available because it came with $30 of free Bitcoin in it. But then Bitcoin crashed and people stopped using it. So now that Bitcoin is starting to go up again, probably the people need to get a little bit more incentive to use it. But when I looked on the app called BTC Map, I think that shows the businesses that accept Bitcoin. I have never saw so many businesses accepting it. But because I stayed so few hours, I couldn't go to visit them.

**Timothy Allen:** Yeah, my experience in El Salvador, I've been there a couple of times. And the best part of the adoption story for me was people using wallets like Strike, for example, which allowed people to pay in Bitcoin and them to receive USDT.

**Olivier Roland:** Yeah, my guy actually, he had set up his wallet to convert automatically in USD. I said, why do you do that? He said, well, I need to make a living.

**Timothy Allen:** So, of course, I mean, I think a lot of Bitcoiners for years have scoffed at that notion. But I lived there for a couple of months and realized it's an imperative part of the journey because actually, I wouldn't want to receive Bitcoin in its volatile stage when if I was running a stall on the beach. But I would be happily take USDT, which you can transfer easily. And you can turn it in, you can even turn it into dollar bills if you want from the cash machine. And that makes totally more sense to me. And I think it's a very important part of the journey for adoption. I really do.

**Olivier Roland:** Yeah, I mean, I'm listening to Peter Cormack podcast and he did a trip and he said people want dollars more than Bitcoins right now because it's too volatile. But also, so an obstacle for crypto adoption in El Salvador that I think many people don't know outside of it is like so when my guest said you can pay me Bitcoin, I said, OK, let me pay you. And he said, we were in the streets. And he said, OK, let's go back to the center place because you have Wi-Fi there.

And I said, you don't have internet on your phone? He said, no. I said, why? He said, it's $1 a day. It's too expensive. Because the minimum or the average salary is $200 per month there. So you need to pay $30 a month for internet. It's completely crazy. Nobody does that. So we had to move to a place where there was Wi-Fi and the Wi-Fi didn't work. And it was like, ah, sorry, can you pay me with dollars? I was like, no, let's go back to your bar, which was like five minutes of walk. You have Wi-Fi there? He said, yes, and I will pay you in Bitcoin.

But see, it's a big obstacle. If people don't have internet all the time, you cannot use cryptos. We don't think about it. But so Buccleuch needs to do something about that. Because without that, people will not adopt cryptos. I can't remember now what I did, but I'm sure I got a SIM card. I don't remember it being that much. I had a SIM card. I had a local SIM card. Because my problem was, which is something I'd never thought of before, until I lived in a country that accepted Bitcoin as legal tender, was that I was often going out of signal.

You know, often you would want to pay in Bitcoin and you realize, I've got no signal here. And that was like a light bulb moment for me. Because I'd never, and it's so stupid to think that you wouldn't acknowledge something like that. But until I actually was spending Bitcoin on a daily basis, it never occurred to me. You need internet. So when every phone will have a Starlink connection embedded, maybe the problem will be solved. But it can be a big obstacle in some countries. Or of course, the infrastructure necessary. I'm pretty, I mean, Bukele appears to be going full speed ahead. Roads, infrastructure, you name it. I would imagine mobile phone infrastructure would be quite high on his list.

**Timothy Allen:** Did you happen to find anything out about Bitcoin City when you were there? In El Salvador?

**Olivier Roland:** I didn't know. I mean, I stayed one day. So I wish I had more time. When I was like, if I like Prospera, I will stay. If I like it-ish, I will come back to El Salvador. But I really liked Prospera, so I stayed there. And I didn't have time to explore El Salvador.

**Timothy Allen:** You said you're writing a book at the moment. What exactly is the subject of it?

**Olivier Roland:** So it's about the disruption of national state by the internet, and how to thrive in this new world. So I mean, I'm talking about a lot of the topics we talked today. Like now, because people are more and more mobile, and it's not only wealthy people, it's also the middle class. Because if you have an internet business or you work completely remotely, well, you have like dozens of jurisdictions fighting to attract you with the best package of low taxes, great quality of life, and good government services.

And Dubai understands that. It's one of the places that understands that and really tries to attract you, but also many others. When you look at the digital nomad visas, for example, the first one to introduce that was Estonia in 2020. And three years later, you have more than 50 countries having a digital nomad visa, which is like one quarter of all the countries in the world in three years. So the race is starting, the competition is intensifying, and sooner. And already it is right now.

The only country that takes you for granted and will try to make, to compel you to force you to stay is your country, your home country. Everyone else is fighting to attract you, and your country takes you for granted. And the thing is very disruptive.

And I mean, that's one of the many topics I talk about in the book.

**Timothy Allen:** When we were talking earlier off camera, you and Peter, mentioned the similarity between the sovereign individual thesis and what you're interested in. And you said that one of the reasons you're writing the book is because you wanted to check the data on whether the sovereign individual thesis was manifesting. Would you care to share your findings so far? I think that's fascinating.

**Olivier Roland:** Yeah, because I mean, I read the sovereign individual in 2021. And I left my home country, France, in 2015. So I live in London and then here. And when I read it, I was like, wow, that's exactly what I'm doing and what many people around me are doing too.

And it really made my mind explode that some guys predicted all of these 20 years before. I was like, wow. And so it inspired me to do a few things.

First I was like, how can they be so right about predicting the future? What did they do? I tried to reverse engineer what they did.

And also something I didn't like about this book was there was no data. The guys were doing a bunch of predictions. You could see that they were mostly right because when you read 25 years later, you see they were mostly right. But there was no data.

So I was like, OK, maybe my experience is aligned with the vision of the guys, but maybe worldwide it's not true. So I was like, somebody needs to do a dive into the data and see if it is right or not. For example, they are predicting that the nation state will have a harder and harder time to raise taxes. It's easy to prove or disprove. You can just look at the data and the trends and see if it's right or wrong. But they didn't do it. So I did it. And I mean, I'm not the only one. Also scientists and many researchers are researching this, but they are usually not sharing that public. I mean, it's not very well known outside of academic circles.

So for example, it's amazing when you look at the average corporate tax rate. And I'm not speaking about the theoretical tax rate, but like the real medium tax rate. It went from around 46%, the weighted average in 1980, to 23% right now. So it's a massive decrease. And you can see the curve is like this, you know? It's decreasing like every period of three years is decreasing. Same thing if you look at the top marginal rate for income tax. Many countries in 1980 had a marginal income tax of 75% for the top rate. You know, 75 or 80. In the UK it was 90% at the end of the 70s, which is crazy. In the US too.

But now they cannot do it anymore. So you can see that the data aligns mostly with the vision. Although there is like a contradiction to this, because when you look at the percentage of taxes compared to the GDP, it actually increased since the 60s. Even though the rates were going down. So when I saw that, I was like, why? I didn't understand the paradox.

And I had to really do a deep dive into very like esoteric research. I contacted a few researchers to understand. And basically it's a combination of factors. It's a fact that actually capital and corporate taxes are going down, but labor taxes are going up. So it means the mobile people are escaping, the companies are escaping, but the middle class doesn't understand what is going on and is immobile.

And they are what I call one country guys, mono country guys, meaning a mono country guy is someone who is born in one country, is raised in this country, he mostly speaks the language of this country, he studied in this country, work in this country, invest in this country, have children in this country, retire in this country, and die in this country.

It's a mono country guy. And when you look around you, like 95% of the people are like this. There is nothing to be ashamed of. You can see people like this, it's mostly the middle class right now, and they don't move so governments are taxing them more and more, and they don't realize it.

But remote work makes them able to escape now. They didn't realize it yet because it's so early. I mean, it's really COVID that made remote work exploded, so it's so soon. People didn't do the connection yet.

When people think about remote work now, they're like, hey, I will be able to work from the countryside, amazing, or I will be able to go to this region of my country that I like, but they don't realize that they can also go to other countries that will give them better packages.

So this is very disruptive. And yeah, so when we realize they are taxed more and more and they get less services, probably they will want to escape too. So this is the first factor, and the other one is like companies are becoming more... Even though they are less taxed at the rate, they are becoming more and more profitable on average because of the digital economy. I compare specifically in my book a Blockbuster with Netflix because Blockbuster was actually the first competitor of Netflix. I mean, Netflix was the competitor of Blockbuster. Blockbuster was like a company that was renting DVDs and VHS in the US. And when you look at the profitability of Blockbuster at its peak year, which was 2004, and Netflix in 2022, and you correct for inflation, you can see that Netflix has like 10 times the profitability per employee than Blockbuster because Blockbuster had thousands of physical locations everywhere. They had to manage the inventory. They had almost 90,000 employees, and Netflix have a better reach because they are worldwide and they have 12,000 employees, and they don't need to have physical locations and inventory. So even if they are taxed less, because they have more income, like net income, the taxes are better, you know?

**Timothy Allen:** Yeah, I mean, what did you call them, the people that stay in one country?

**Olivier Roland:** Mono-country.

**Timothy Allen:** The mono-country people are essentially a captive audience. But what I'm wondering is because...

**Olivier Roland:** But they are growing wings.

**Timothy Allen:** Well are they or are they not? This is the thing because I'm one of those guys. And because of circumstances, I'm a victim of circumstance. I have an embedded life in the UK. My children are there. They love it. Dubai is not the place for me because more than anything, the environment is not the kind of environment I like. But my wife doesn't want to move either. So I am that guy and there's nothing much I can do about it.

Sure, I don't want to pay tax. I don't like, I look at Dubai and I think how lovely it would be to have all that extra money each year to spend on my business or to spend on my family. But it's not enough to tempt me away from a farm in Herefordshire where I live. Do you see what I mean?

**Olivier Roland:** Absolutely. Yeah. No, it's fine. I mean, everyone will have his own incentives and constraints. But you see, you're touching also on a very interesting subject because there will be a new criteria for finding a spouse.

It is already. Are you willing to move out with me to other countries or not? It was not so much, it was not really a criteria before. It's also a generational thing, right? But more and more it's going to be, hey, I don't want to be tied to one territory. Are you willing to explore the world with me? And we don't need to move every three months. Don't get me wrong. Maybe we can move every five years or we move if we don't like the place anymore. But I think it's going to be more and more a criteria.

**Timothy Allen:** Interestingly, though, I've traveled constantly almost for 25 years. And my wife has also traveled a fair bit. But when it came to it, when children began appearing, her instinct was to go to be near her mother, for example, which is a very strong instinct, I think, and certainly in women. And those kind of things, I don't know.

Like I say, I'm fascinated to see the future because I do wonder how the idea of mobility will manifest in the future. For example, digital nomads are always the pioneers of these places. As you said, if you look at Prospera, almost certainly the majority of people buying residences there are probably digital nomads. But unfortunately, they're also the ones that are most likely to move on as well, which is a real predicament when you think about it.

How do you attract people to your free city or to your autonomous zone without expecting them to want to stay? Because without them staying, you end up with holiday homes. You end up with partly residential places that are empty at certain times of the year, which is a death wish for places, in my experience. You want a place like Dubai where people come. And I think I've heard this a number of times even on this trip. I came to Dubai to check it out. Five years later, I'm still here. It seems to be that it really doesn't...

**Olivier Roland:** Yeah, that's what's happened to me. Right. It works. So what are they doing right?

But wait, I'm based in Dubai, but I have been traveling the world for six months a year since 2010. And I didn't change this habit when I arrived in Dubai. It's my base. I spend most of my time here than in any other country right now, I mean, since I arrived, but I still travel a lot, a lot.

And so there are so many things we can talk about this. First, so you say my wife now has this instinct. So first, I have many friends with a wife and they are following them. Second, I agree that even if people have the ability to move, most people will want to stay in their country. But what I'm saying is like the minority will move, which will be significant enough that it's going to disrupt the system anyway. And also it is going to create like this movement and it's going to be more and more obvious for a certain percentage of the population to be able to be mobile.

And third, it's just a continuation of a trend that started a long time ago, because like 500 years ago, probably your wife would have said, "I don't want to leave the village. That's the village where I was born in." And that's it. But now probably she's okay to move to another city in the country. But why? Because just the technology and the mindset expanded. And it's the same thing, just continuing on international things. And 500 years ago, if you moved to one village to like, I don't know, in the west to London, it was a big cultural shock. Already the people were different. They didn't talk exactly the same. And now it's more homogeneous in the UK. So it's not also as much a big deal.

**Timothy Allen:** I suppose as soon as we have intergalactic travel, moving around the world will seem like nothing.

**Olivier Roland:** Yeah, right. Exactly. It's, yeah, it's influenced by technology and the mindset is influenced by technology, but the mindset also influences the technology. So yeah, it's just a continuation of a general trend. And I wanted to say something else, but I forgot.

**Timothy Allen:** Well, it was probably, we were talking about why this model will transpire.

**Olivier Roland:** Yeah. And also, how do you make the digital nomads stay? So do you want them to stay or not? So a few things. First, I think it's kind of a curse and a blessing at the same time to try to attract digital nomads.

It's a curse because, yeah, it's hard to make them stay. And probably the first big problem, they all leave, you know. But at the same time, it's a really great incentive to offer the best package possible. So it's good to make governments motivated to try new things. And also, another way of looking at it is like the network state. Like Prospera right now want to expand the model and even the brand of Prospera to other countries. The idea already is that if you are a resident of Prospera, one day, we don't know when, we don't know if, but that's the vision. One day, you will be able to go to Prospera Honduras, to Prospera like Senegal, to Prospera Japan, to Prospera Philippines.

**Timothy Allen:** Is that an official policy of theirs?

**Olivier Roland:** No, but people were talking about it when I was there. Probably they are not in the position to do it right now, but you know, it could work. And I mean, even if, let's say they create Prospera El Salvador, still, it's too early.

Even if you are a resident of Prospera, you will still need, if you want to live in El Salvador to go through the El Salvadorian system, it's too early for this. But we can see maybe in a few decades that they do partnership. And because they have this brand and reputation, they can say, yeah, we vouch for the people. So we want to have this agreement that people who are residents of Prospera, they will not need to go through your system, or maybe they will be streamlined, you know. We can envision that.

**Timothy Allen:** Any other elements in your book that show that the sovereign individual thesis is actually playing out in real life?

**Olivier Roland:** I mean, mostly, I think it does. I saw a few things that, like the fact that the taxes as a percentage of GDP is increasing, that is contradictory. But when you look into the details, actually it goes with a vision, with the predictions.

I mean, something very interesting that is too early to tell. They predicted that the nation states will try to counter things by creating cartels. And that's what is going on with the OECD trying to impose a minimal global tax.

So they did predict this. They predicted they will fail at it, mostly. So this is too early to tell. From what I can see, I think probably they will fail because it's such a mess. This whole system is like ridiculous. It took years to organize. They wanted to have a 21% minimum tax, and then they had to settle for 15. But I mean, they are so fucked.

**Timothy Allen:** Okay, here's my observation of network states, because we had a fair amount of interaction with people from that side of the movement, let's say. Recently we went to Montenegro. And it was interesting for me because I agree. They are, their strategy is start online, manifest in real life.

It's almost like the free cities end, the free private cities end are more like, okay, let's get all the investment, let's create the city and then we attract the people to come. And they're both interesting strategies. I'm not as enamored by the network state idea as maybe you, I don't know. Because I find that the kind of personality type that is attracted to the network state idea is a little bit more transient anyway, and a little bit more like the tech people are just innovating, but not necessarily participating. Do you understand what I'm saying?

**Olivier Roland:** Yeah, maybe. I mean, it's still very early, so it's hard to say. But I mean, I think it makes sense what Balaji proposed. Like first you bring a community around a certain topic, then you make them, I mean, and he's right. It's not so hard to build a community of hundreds of thousands of people online.

I mean, on my YouTube channel, I have almost 300,000 people. Is it a community? You can argue about that. Maybe not. But still, it's possible to have a community with many, many members easily online because you have so much less friction. And then you make a portion of them commit, and Balaji proposed that you make them commit by putting crypto in an escrow account or something. And then you try to negotiate with governments for the land.

Actually, in my book, I propose an intermediate solution. I didn't see Balaji speaking about it. So it's like between just the online community and the network state, there is an intermediate step that I think is easier and it could be a good way to start. You create this community, for example, of digital nomads, and you have like 50,000 members. It's not hard to get that. It's not so hard. And you can go to governments and you make a survey in your group and you say, hey, we're going to negotiate good conditions for you in certain countries. Which country do you want us to negotiate with?

And then you ask, how much do you make? Are you really willing to go? And you make them commit maybe by sending some bitcoins or something in an account. And then you go to Portugal, to Indonesia, to these countries and you say, hey, we have 5,000 people making on average $200,000 a year who are willing to come to your country and we can guarantee that if you give us the best conditions.

And just so you know, we're also in talk with Portugal, with this country. So what conditions can you give us? You know, it's like an union for digital nomads. And I don't think it's so hard to do, actually. I think you can do it pretty easily. I will do a call to action in my book for people who want to do this. And it's an intermediate state, right? It's not a network state, but you could see it's a proto-network state. Because you have some bargaining power with governments and you can get good packages, maybe. Probably some governments will agree. I mean, it's a good bootstrap, you know.

**Timothy Allen:** It seems to be easier to pull it off. I mean, and like you say, it only has to happen once or twice for it to probably spread like wildfire as you said.

**Olivier Roland:** We need, I mean, for all of these things, we need a few good examples. And we always, always need to bring value to the host country. That's so important. And it's also very important because, to say that also because most of the, the first critics people will say is like, is going to be parasitic. It's like neo-colonialism and these kind of things. But it's not going to work if it's like neo-colonialism. It needs really to bring value to the country. And in Prospera, I was impressed to see so many Hondurans working there. I was impressed actually. It's actually written into the constitution. They are really doing a good job of interrogating Hondurans.

**Timothy Allen:** But it's also because they know that they need to do it if they want to succeed.

**Olivier Roland:** But I mean, it's actually part of the legal framework. They need at least, I can't remember the exact figure, it's around 80, 85, 90% of people working there must by law be Hondurans.

**Timothy Allen:** Yeah, I think it's fair to have this kind of things in the agreement with governments because they want to have a guarantee that you're going to hire locals, which is fair. So what would it take for you to join one of those network state groups?

**Olivier Roland:** I mean, I think actually, you know, I was thinking what is the online group, online community that is the closest thing to a network state we have now?

And I think it's the digital nomad community. It's a proto-network state. Because as a digital nomad, we have a few hubs in the world already. Dubai is one of them, Bali, Cancun. In Europe, you have Lisbon, Malta, Cyprus. And I mean, you know already the places. You know if you go there, it's going to be easy to meet digital nomads. So it's interesting. We don't have official territory yet, but we have places where you know you'll be able to meet like-wise people.

And we are not a nation yet, but there is this sense of belonging to the same community with the same many, many common problems and inspiration and things, you know. And it's a very close community. And you know, it's easy for you to go to an event of digital nomads and make friends and bring value and get value when you're a digital nomad. So yeah, I think it's really close to being a network state. We just need to have a few inspiring leaders, a bit more maybe a framework, a theoretical framework, but a few people like Balaji are doing it. And then to have some land somewhere, probably.

**Timothy Allen:** Maybe you're the guy. Maybe you're that guy.

**Olivier Roland:** Maybe I'm one of them, I don’t know.

**Timothy Allen:** Who are the main influencers then in the digital nomad space, let's say? You know, people that everyone knows, especially like say I've got a YouTube channel with a lot of followers.

**Olivier Roland:** Well, I mean, there is still a kind of a separation between languages, not between countries, but between languages. So people will not follow the same people in French, Spanish or English. Even though English is a lingua franca and many people will follow some guys everywhere, no matter the language. But for example, Balaji is not well known in the digital nomad community.

Only the other thing, I think what the core ingredient that is lacking right now is in the digital nomad community to be a real, real proto network state or quasi network state is a sense of political belonging and some political thought. Actually, the digital nomads don't see themselves as a political entity right now and they don't have political leaders.

But Balaji, for example, could be one of the leaders or at least one of the political philosophers. But most digital nomads don't have this consciousness yet. You know, it's like very low. I hope with my book to bring a little bit of awareness to this community and others too. But it's like an ongoing work. I'm not the only one who will do that. But as soon as they will have a little bit of political consciousness, they will want leaders. And then people like Balaji will be able to...

**Timothy Allen:** What about in the French community?

**Olivier Roland:** To answer your question, like for example, someone like Tim Ferriss is a huge influential figure in the digital nomad community, but he's not a political leader. But he paved the way for our lifestyle by publishing the Four-Hour Workweek almost 20 years ago. And probably maybe one of the most well-known figures in this world. But yeah, and in France, I would say I'm one of the most well-known, although other too, you know, but yeah. And in other markets, other languages, I don't know.

**Timothy Allen:** And so talk to me about that, being a well-known influencer in a market like the market of living together, let's say digital nomadism. What benefits does that afford you? What does it bring to you?

**Olivier Roland:** I would not say I'm a leader in the living together market because people don't have the awareness yet. The digital nomads. I'm trying to bring it to them, but they still don't think about it. I mean, they think about “what is the best place where I can have the best lifestyle and the lowest taxes possible”, basically. And which is a good first step, but they don't think about a network state and free cities. Most of them don't know about it, but they are ready to learn about it.

**Timothy Allen:** How often do you speak about it?

**Olivier Roland:** All the time. All the time. I mean, online with my content, not all the time, but with my friends, all the time. My content is for entrepreneurs. So I do speak about it from time to time, but it's not the core content of what I'm doing. But people know I'm writing a book about it. I also think it's better to read the book because some concepts are so far away from where people are right now that they need to do a deep dive into it.

You know, when my book will be published, I will build a whole ecosystem around it, like a YouTube channel. Or maybe I will use the actual YouTube channel. I don't know. I feel I mean, a huge part of my customers still live in their home country. You know, they could leave if they wanted to, but they still don't for many reasons, including some of what you shared. And my goal is to make them more aware of the options and make them more willing to try it, you know.

**Timothy Allen:** Is your book going to be French speaking?

**Olivier Roland:** So I'm writing it in French. It will be published first in French, but I really hope that is going to be translated in other languages.

**Timothy Allen:** Does it have a name yet?

**Olivier Roland:** Yeah, I mean, the name is not definitive. You want the name in French?

**Timothy Allen:** Sure.

**Olivier Roland:** “Tout le monde n'aura pas la chance de quitter son pays”. So the thing is, it doesn't translate well in English. It's because my first book was “Tout le monde n'a pas eu la chance de rater ses études”, which means “not everyone had the chance to fail at his studies”. But in English, it doesn't sound so good. But in French, it's amazing. So that's the thing we kind of love since my book was translated in English as “The Way of the Intelligent Rebel”. And I don't know yet what will be the title in English.

**Timothy Allen:** The Way of the Intelligent Rebel.

**Olivier Roland:** Yeah, this is my first book. But the one I'm writing right now, I'm publishing excerpts of it on the English speaking blog called Disruptive Horizons.

**Timothy Allen:** So tell me then, from your experience amongst the digital nomad community, what are the most receptive ideas from the Free Cities movement? What ideas are people most receptive to?

**Olivier Roland:** They are really intrigued by the idea of having a real social contract. They are really intrigued by being free to choose any currency. They are really intrigued of no red tape and it's easy to create a business and to manage it and by low taxes. Because well, I mean, all but one of those are things that they can get right now here in Dubai, right?

**Timothy Allen:** Yes. So really, the key is the contract.

**Olivier Roland:** You know, I think Dubai is going to be a tough competition, honestly, because they also have the network effect already. And it's really hard to beat the network effect. I think the Free Cities can attract, but I mean, first, Dubai is not for everyone. You need to make a good income to really live here nicely. People who are starting, they go mostly to Thailand or the Philippines or Bali because it's cheaper in East Asia, right? So but yeah, there are already places that are more tied to certain type of digital nomads.

**Timothy Allen:** Yeah, it's not the same type goes to Bali, then go to Dubai, then go to Panama, for example. Go on, break it down for me. This is all new information. Are we saying you get more yoga instructors, yoga influencers in Bali, you get more entrepreneurs here in Dubai ? Can you tell me a little bit about the personalities then of, not the people personalities, but the personalities of the countries that attract what kind of influence?

**Olivier Roland:** Yeah, I mean, it depends also of what kind of landscape and weather you want. Some people, they love nature, they love trees, they love jungle. So Dubai is going to be hard. I mean, there is some nature contrary to what most people think, but it's not the same type of nature you will get in Bali or Costa Rica for sure.

So if you really love tropical beaches with coconut trees, Dubai is not for you. And for many people, it's bad for this, right? Also people who are conscious about the environment, most of them don't like Dubai. They want to go to Bali, it's good for them, for example. So already you see this competition between places to attract digital nomads. Also some people don't want to be too far away from their homeland for many reasons. So in Europe, for example, people will go to Lisbon or Cyprus or Malta because it's just a two hours flight from their home city.

**Timothy Allen:** Other than the environment then, what are the incentives to live in Bali? Is there a tax incentive?

**Olivier Roland:** I mean, so the thing, I mean, there are taxes, but in some countries you have what you should pay theoretically and what everyone pays in practice. And Bali is one of these countries, you know, so in practice you don't need to pay so much taxes.

But if you want to follow everything by the book, it's a different story. But yeah, it's very, I mean, most people come from Western countries in Europe and it's really, really high taxed. So it's really hard to find a country that is more taxed than your home country, right? And most people are okay to pay a bit of taxes if they like the country where they live in.

Some people are really chasing the 0%, some of them. But I will say it's a minority. Most people want a good quality price ratio. I'm looking at my friends here and I mean, there are hundreds of people in my industry. It's crazy. It's a bigger hub than Paris. And I didn't notice anyone saying they would want to leave Dubai, now that there is a 9% tax because everything is amazing, right? So a 9% is not so high and you still don't have a personal income tax, you don't have corporate gain tax. So it's worth it.

**Timothy Allen:** When you say your industry, do you mean the industry of helping people relocate or?

**Olivier Roland:** No, it means the industry of people teaching how to grow your business basically. And I mean, not only that, but like people teaching how to, I mean, the global industry where I am is like how to make money. So that's what I'm referring to, like people teach that, how to do real estate, how to do it with like other type of investment. I do it by teaching entrepreneurship.

I mean, I'm teaching entrepreneurship, mostly content marketing and how to have a business in service of your life. But in the end, you need to make money. That's what I'm teaching like at the core. I prefer to say I'm a teacher of freedom, but my whole industry is make money.

**Timothy Allen:** And when you say teach it, do you mean one-on-one consultations or are you making money from your channel?

**Olivier Roland:** No, you cannot have a business in service of your life if you exchange your time from your money. So how does it work? I mean, your time is your most precious asset. So if you're exchanging your time for your money, it means you value money way more than your time, which is a bad, bad deal.

So ideally you want to make money when you sleep. So how do you do that? Well, what you teach or what you do is a skill and this skill can be taught in a more automated way. So like instead of, for example, doing a live lesson to students, you do the live lesson with students, but you record it and then magically you have a product.

That's as simple as that. And if you don't teach, but you have a skill, well, teach your skill and teach it in front of a camera and then magically you have a product. So I'm selling online courses and most of my colleagues too. And of course we also have coaches to help the students and stuff. I mean, it depends what type of product you do, but the high-end flagship online courses we sell, there is like the whole ecosystem of the community, the coaches, the lessons, but you don't need yourself to exchange your time for your money, you know?

**Timothy Allen:** Unless you're updating the content, obviously.

**Olivier Roland:** No, of course, yeah, yeah. Even these, you can update the content by yourself or you can just tell your team, hey, you need to update this lesson with these and these, you know?

**Timothy Allen:** Do you use your YouTube channel as a marketing tool or as to make money?

**Olivier Roland:** Oh, no, as a marketing tool. Yeah. I mean, my channel is not monetized.

**Timothy Allen:** Really?

**Olivier Roland:** That's one of the core things I'm teaching is I'm not teaching people to be influencers. I teach them to be infopreneurs. So the biggest difference is influencers entertain people, infopreneurs help people. So there are many differences between the two jobs occupation.

To be an influencer and to make money, you need to have a huge traffic and you need to do ads and like product promotion, basically. But the problem with that is it doesn't work if you don't have huge traffic because the value per visitor is very low. Because why? It's not qualified. Because everyone wants to laugh. Everyone wants to be distracted. Do you hate laughing?

**Timothy Allen:** No.

**Olivier Roland:** Yeah, right? I mean, if I'm in a room of 1,000 people and I say, hey, who hates to laugh from time to time? Nobody will raise his hand, right? It's not qualified because everyone wants to laugh. Of course, even if you're very, very funny, not everyone will like your humor. But still, it's not qualified enough.

But the infopreneur, because he wants to help, he doesn't need this huge audience. He can have a small audience, but he will make good money because people will want to pay for the course and maybe the service because they want to overcome a struggle in their domain of interest. So, for example, I have students in many, many different fields. Like, I have students in photography, in dance, in like, I have a student who is teaching how to entertain your kids by taking a walk in the forest. And she makes money with it. It's crazy.

And I have students teaching Japanese, how to learn Japanese, how to play violin, these kind of things, right? And so if you take the industry of teaching violin, what is the biggest struggle that the students want, the people want to overcome? It's like, oh, I play very bad. When I play my violin, my family just closes their ears because it's too bad. I want to play nicely, at least one song so I can make my family enjoy, you know?

So she will create content and products to help with this goal. And people will want to pay for a solution that will help them overcome their biggest struggle. And the value per visitor is way higher than someone who just wants to be entertained.

**Timothy Allen:** Interesting. And you'd say that in the digital nomad ecosystem, what percentage of people are sort of following that route, do you think? I think here you said quite a few, but in general?

**Olivier Roland:** I think here you find a lot because it's my field. So many people I know are doing this in different fields, right? The other types I'm meeting are developers, because you can code everywhere, it doesn't matter. And developers are so thought after that companies are willing to give them the best conditions. Maybe it will change with AI, maybe they will become obsolete. We don't know yet, but we'll see.

Everyone who can work remotely. I remember I've been to an event in Lisbon in 2017 about remote working. And it was very interesting because it was completely different from the type of people going there, was completely different from the people I usually meet. It was like secretary, like normal people, but working remotely, you know, and also enjoying this kind of freedom that we web entrepreneurs, we have. And you have also another profile is people who do e-commerce.

**Timothy Allen:** Interesting. I'm acutely aware that it's pitch black outside now. We've been sat here and talking for a long time, and I think everyone's probably ready to go. But thanks for letting us go off topic. I relish the chance to ask people about these kind of things. So thanks for talking. And thanks for inviting us here.

**Olivier Roland:** Thank you.